The present invention is in the technical field of audio equipment. The invention particularly relates to systems and methods for autonomously playing audio files, and more particularly at specific times of the day, week, and year, for example, relative to astronomical events.
Conventional music players are not typically automated to operate at specific times. Instead, they ordinarily require human intervention to play audio files at specific times, for example, on a particular day or at a particular time of day. Playing audio files at specific times requires an operator to be present at those times to manually start the playing of such audio files. If the desire is to play an audio file at a specific time of day, for example, at an astronomical event such as dusk or dawn, the operator must further determine the time of the event for that particular day and manually initiate the playing of the audio file at the determined time. Timing is further complicated if the desire is to begin or complete the playing of an audio file at a time offset from the event, for example, prior to or after dusk or dawn.
Systems are known for controlling lights to save energy, for example, with light sensors that supply power to light sources when ambient light declines around sunset. However, the sensors do not operate on the actual time of sunset (or other astronomical event), but rather simply sense ambient light that not only depends on the astronomical event, but also the location of the sensor, cloud cover, etc.